Within the United States, many people are accustomed to making long distance personal telephone calls. Having made large numbers of long distance telephone calls, these people have a reasonable estimation of what the cost of a long distance telephone call will be for particular times of the day and destinations. However, most people have little idea of what the cost of making an international call is. In addition, there are other people who because of economic, cultural, or language differences have little idea how much it will cost to make a domestic or international telephone call. In addition, these people may have a very fixed amount of money that they have available to spend on a long distance telephone call.
One way for these people to overcome their problem, is to call a long distance operator of a long distance provider and request the rate information from that operator for a particular call. There is of course a language difficulty in obtaining this information; and in general, people are reluctant to request such information from another person.
In addition, devices are known which automatically provide the charges for a telephone call when connected with a telephone to a telephone line. U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,422 discloses such a device as does U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,238. The problem with such devices is that they must be pre-attached to the telephone line, and they only give information for the accumulated charge after the call has been placed.